Oregon Ducks

The Oregon Ducks play their home games at the sleek, glass-walled Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, a fitting showcase for a program with genuine historical claim to being college basketball's very first champion. Now a Big Ten member, Oregon blends up-tempo modern basketball with deep West Coast roots. The Ducks' green-and-yellow brand carries real weight nationally, buoyed by the university's broader athletic muscle. Few programs can trace their lineage back to the birth of the NCAA Tournament itself.

Oregon's "Tall Firs," coached by Howard Hobson, won the very first NCAA men's basketball championship in 1939, defeating Ohio State 46-33 to bring home the school's first national title in any sport. The Ducks were a fixture of the old Pacific Coast Conference and later the Pac-12 for decades before that conference's collapse sent Oregon to the Big Ten in 2024. The 1939 championship remains the program's only NCAA title, but it holds a permanent place in the sport's origin story.